


Words

by Mohini



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Drug Use, Hurt/Comfort, Long term illness, M/M, Past Child Abuse, semi-accidental overdose
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-08-02
Updated: 2014-08-02
Packaged: 2018-02-11 11:54:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2067204
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Mohini/pseuds/Mohini
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>These words don’t belong to my world, they can’t. They make no sense to me and I know him better than anyone. Overdose. Deliberate. Brain damage. Coma. The healers tell me these things, but they cannot be true. He wouldn't do this. I know he wouldn't. I hope he wouldn't. I don't know anything anymore.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Words

**Author's Note:**

> Another little story moved over here from my account at The Hex Files (medireh). Just a bit of fluffy hurt and comfort for my favorite boys. Hope you enjoy it!

Disclaimer: This story is based on characters and situations created and owned by JK Rowling, various publishers including but not limited to Bloomsbury Books, Scholastic Books and Raincoast Books, and Warner Bros., Inc. No money is being made and no copyright or trademark infringement is intended.

I try not to hear the words she speaks as Hermione pats my hand in what I am sure she thinks is a comforting gesture. The words don’t belong to my world, they can’t. They make no sense to me and I know him better than anyone. Overdose. Deliberate. Brain damage. Coma. She can’t tell me if he will wake, or how much of him will remain if he does. All I can think is that I should have stayed home where I belonged, instead of heading out with my team for a match so far away. I find myself cataloguing the ingredients in the potions cupboard, and take disturbing comfort in knowing just what could be brewed with them, if I need to. 

I sit beside him, and the hours fade to days. I eat the meals that are placed in front of me. I accept the hugs from my family, from our friends. Neville comes the most often, sitting with me in silence. He never pushes me to talk to him, never asks if there is any improvement. He is just there. I am so grateful to the man that I will never be able to express it properly. All the hugs and well wishes and what I need most is this silence, the knowledge that someone else is here, just to be. 

The healers begin murmuring quiet words when they think I cannot hear them. Things like permanent vegetative state, Janus Thickey ward, words I do not want to hear, not for him, not for the man who I have loved since we were children. When they tell me, in hushed voices they think are kind, that he needs to be moved to a long term ward, I refuse. I demand that they keep him here, in the main hospital, where they cannot shove him aside and forget about him, forget about who he is. Hermione comes again, in her best hospital administrator version of herself. I scream at her, asking her how she could possibly do this to him, after all the time they have spent together. I remind her of our school years, how inseparable they were. When I finally stop screaming, she pats my hand again and I want to hit her. 

Instead, I cry. She wraps her arms around me and holds me tight, and it feels so wrong. She is too soft, too small, too not him to comfort me. I need strong arms that hold me tight enough to bruise. I need a chest that is muscled from years of hard physical exercise. I need him. When the tears have dried, I stare once more at him, so still and quiet in the bed. I kiss one of his hands, and I close my eyes. I pray to any god that might hear me, to the spirit of Dumbledore, to anyone beyond the veil who cared once for this broken man. I sleep that night in my chair, afraid to let go of his hand. 

When the healers come that morning, I am calm and clear. I will not allow him to be placed in a locked ward. If he will not improve, I will take him home, where he belongs. We have house-elves enough to help me. I will care for him myself. Neville has agreed to be his healer, will come to the house and check on him. My debt to the man who grew out of a shy, clumsy little boy increases tenfold. By evening, the arrangements are made. I send Luna to the house to instruct the elves in how to prepare our room, which will now become his sanctuary. 

Morning comes and I take my husband home. I ignore the sad looks that the healers give me. I know they think this is the wrong choice, that I should give his care over to the people on the locked ward, but I will not abandon him. He must have felt so alone, that morning when he swallowed so many potions that his heart stopped. The house-elves found him, Apparated him to St. Mungo’s, but I am beginning to fear they may have been too late after all.

Weeks pass, and he remains unchanged. I bathe him myself, not allowing anyone else to touch his unclothed body. I watch as the strong limbs that held me tight so many times begin to wither from disuse. Neville suggests Muggle physiotherapy to prevent atrophy, and I move his arms and legs through countless exercises each day. Still he does not wake.

I sleep beside him at night, and the only time I leave him is when Luna comes each morning for me to retreat into the shower. I cry there, deep sobs that I would be ashamed of at any other time. The warm water lets me pretend that tears are not coursing down my face. I am so tired. I cry out for someone to help him. I cry to my mother, to my father, long gone from anything but my memories. I beg forgiveness for my sins, I beg for him to wake, for me to see his eyes one more time. 

After yet another morning spent bawling in my shower, I enter the bedroom to find Luna standing beside him, stroking his hand and telling him in her soft, ethereal voice that I will return soon. I think little of it, since I know that like myself, she speaks to him as though he were awake and aware. Then she turns at the sound of my footsteps and beckons me closer, a smile lighting up her face. I am almost afraid to comply, afraid to hope that the smile means what I so long for it to mean.

There, propped in the bed on the pillows as I left him before my shower, is my husband. For the first time in five long months, his eyes are open. “Harry,” I whisper, afraid that speaking any louder will break whatever wonderful magic has brought him back to me. A hand lifts from its spot on the covers, shaking from the effort it takes him to do so, to reach out to me. I get to him, gathering him in my arms and hugging him close. From within the confines of my embrace, I hear his voice, rough from disuse. “Draco.”

I hold him tight, whispering that I love him. I hear Luna telling me that she will go and summon Neville. A few moments later, Neville comes striding into the room. He immediately wraps his arms around both of us before withdrawing his wand. “Harry? I need to examine you. You’ve been out a long while and I need to know what to do for you now.” He speaks with the calm efficiency that his Healer training has brought to him. I am shaking, tears falling rapidly, and Harry is shuddering in my arms from his own tears as Neville begins the spells.

When he is finished, he goes to the hospital to retrieve the potions he needs. By evening, I have been taught an entirely new regimen for Harry’s care. He will need to regain strength slowly, and Neville provides new Muggle physiotherapy exercises to reteach his muscles to hold him. I am shocked when I realize that Harry cannot sit up on his own. There are dozens of potions, many of them not completely legal outside a hospital. Neville assures me that it has been taken care of, when I ask if he will be in trouble for what he is providing. He tells me that Harry has endured enough pain for ten lifetimes, and that the pain potions will be tapered off eventually but are necessary now. 

It takes more than a month before Harry can sit in a chair without pillows packed in around him to hold him up. We spend much of that month in tears, with him crying in pain as he works and me crying from the horrible task of putting him in pain for his own good. We talk, sometimes for hours at a time. We do not talk about that morning. When he is finally strong enough to attempt a few steps on his own, the days have long since faded into months and I realize that it has been nearly a year since Neville showed up on the pitch in Bulgaria, an international Portkey in his hand and tears in his eyes. 

On the anniversary of that horrible morning, I wake to find him sitting up in the bed, watching me. “You know, I don’t think I’ve ever actually told you what happened that morning,” he says softly.

I run a hand down his face and tell him it isn’t necessary, that I don’t have to know. He shakes his head sadly. “You blame yourself. I’ve seen it in your eyes, when I fall or when I tire too quickly. You don’t want to know. But you need to.” I have to admit that once again, he knows me better than I know myself. “I didn’t set out to harm myself, you see. I just wanted to be numb for a little while. The memories hurt so badly. I’d been taking the potions a long time. After that run in with the Lestrange brothers, right before I left the Ministry. Do you remember when you found that phial of Morpheum? We fought about it and you made me toss it out. I promised not to use it again, and I didn’t, but I found other potions. Dreamless Sleep, Draught of Peace, Pachem Serum, I used them all, and far too often. That morning, I had a really bad panic attack. Spent half the morning sicking up from it. I just needed it to stop, and I thought if I took enough to knock me out until you got back, it would be alright. Only I couldn’t get myself to feel better, so I kept taking more. I pulled out the stash that I had hidden, and I broke my promise. I had three phials of Morpheum, and I took them all. I thought it would be alright, I could take that much before without a problem, but then I felt so strange, like nothing was connected anymore. I couldn’t see very well, and I summoned Kreacher, and then everything was blank.”

I sat in silence, utterly stunned. I had suspected he had been taking potions, and had searched the house many times after I found the Morpheum. I had never imagined that he was taking them all the time. He recounted the morning so matter of factly, and I realize I am crying when he reaches to wipe the tears from my face. “Don’t think I took it because you left that morning. I know you think that’s what it was, but it wasn’t. I’d been taking them all for so long. So I didn’t think there was any real danger. I wasn’t trying to kill myself. I wouldn’t have done that to you. I need you to know that.”

I nod, and he begins running his hands up and down my back, letting me press my tear damp face against his chest. His arms are around me, and I remember the horrible months when all I longed for in the world was to feel this one more time. When we had both calmed, I kissed him soundly and ran my hands through his messy hair. “I love you. You scare the hell out of me, but I love you.” 

We lie in bed together and talk for hours. We talk about the war. We talk about the things I saw and did, the things he experienced. We both know that the years that the Dark Lord walked the earth a second time were hell for each of us. What we had never spoken of, and somehow finally do, is that we had been prepared for it practically from birth. I had always assumed his nightmares and panic attacks stemmed from the war. It turns out the memories that haunt him span his entire life.

We talk of his uncle and aunt, of cupboards and cooktops. He shows me the line of scars, faded now, on the palm of one hand. I had wondered what they might be, but never asked. Scars are private. He told me that when he was eight, he had burned a dinner roast and his uncle had held his hand on the burner until the flesh bubbled and smoked. He had never burned anything again. In return, I admit aloud for the first time that Father’s cane was his discipline of choice and that the stiffness of my back is from a childhood of punishment by that means, and not a Quidditch injury as I had so often claimed. 

We spend the day in bed, talking, kissing away tears from one another’s faces. The house-elves bring meals that we barely notice as everything that had been locked away and hushed up is allowed to surface. I had always known that words had the power to cause pain. A childhood of Lucius had made certain of that. Now, admitting the truth of my growing up years and finally knowing of his, I realize that the words we speak also have the power to heal wounds long suffered in silence.


End file.
